Darlin', Come Home
by TheLoversTheDreamersAndMe
Summary: Wanda needs a family. Clint may have the solution for that.
1. Come Home

**_Darlin', Come Home_**

Wanda rolled over on her bed at the Avengers Compound, pulling her blanket over her head. Everything hurt, her head, her eyes, her body, her _soul. _She had lost the last shred of hope she could cling on: her brother. Sleeping was useless, even though she tried time and time again to no avail. Her heart felt like a burnt-out chunk of hardened iron, cold and unfeeling. She shoved the blanket from her face and sat up violently, not allowing the tears to come. Her head swam with dizziness. Wanda shook her head and took a breath then crawled forlornly out of bed towards her small wooden dresser.

Wanda shoved her feet into her boots, preparing to take a walk. Her mind needed to clear from the thoughts swirling in a deadly storm inside it. Ultron was dead, Sokovia was safe, but _Pietro was gone. _The only family she had left.

Clint observed her from the doorway, leaning against the frame, his presence unknown to her. Her hair was a matted mess of red tangles and the dark circles under her eyes were borderline black from lack of sleep. Her body was sore, still healing from the battle a few days before, he could tell, as she moved slowly about her room, her back towards him. As she bent down to put a boot on, her skirt lifted above her knee, showing a rather nasty looking cut on the back of her thigh.

"That looks pretty nasty," Clint said, making his presence known.

Wanda jumped in fright. Usually she could sense when someone was there, but not lately.

"What does?" she asked, turning towards the voice. Clint. Don't get her wrong, she really liked Clint, but she needed to be alone.

"The cut on your leg. You should get it looked at."

Wanda shrugged. "Doesn't hurt." She yanked her hair into a tight ponytail and shoved her arms in her jacket. She shouldered past him and into the hallway. Clint limped after her, shuffling along. Battle had him pretty stiff and he'd messed up his knee pretty good running to get that last kid. When Pietro had saved him.

"Princess, that cut's barely scabbed over. No way that doesn't hurt."

"It's fine. I'll get it looked at later. Go away." Wanda trotted angrily down the hall.

"Mind if I ask where you're going?" Clint asked.

"Just on a walk."

"Mind if I join you?"

"Yes, actually," Wanda retorted. "I want to be alone right now."

"Not gonna happen, Princess. Nobody goes out alone for at least a couple days." Clint shuffled quickly behind her. "'Sides, I thought we could talk."

Wanda shoved open the door to the Avengers compound, breathing in the cool air of dusk. The sun had begun to set behind the trees.

"About what?" she threw back, keeping up a pace just fast enough that Clint couldn't keep up cause of his injury.

"Slow down, Princess," Clint said, hobbling as fast as his knee would allow him.

"I want to be alone," Wanda replied, increasing her pace to a trot.

"You can't be," Clint said, stopping and standing there, hands on hips. "Cap's orders."

"I don't care what Cap says."

"Well, you should, Princess," Clint replied, a slightly stern tone taking precedence in his voice.

"What do you want?" Wanda finally asked, whirling around to face Clint.

"We need to talk, Wanda," Clint said.

"About what? About my dead brother? Cause I already know he's dead, and nothing can change that, and I _don't want your sympathy! Nobody can feel his loss like I did," _Wanda yelled, tears streaming from her face. "He's the only family I had left! You can't possibly know how that feels!"

"You don't think I can feel his loss like you did? He saved my dang life, Wanda! If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be here! His last words haunt me! I hear them echo over and over. It's like he's right behind me constantly, haunting me, dripping blood over my shoulder!" Clint shouted back at her. "And maybe I can't feel his loss like you, but maybe I can feel it on my own way!"

Wanda shuddered, scrubbing away tears with her fists.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Darlin'."

Wanda started to turn around. "Care to finish my walk with me?"

"Wait. I need to show you something, Darlin'." Clint pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. Wanda turned and reached for it, scanning the document quickly.

"This- this is an adoption form," she said in disbelief.

"Yup. All you gotta do is agree."

Wanda took a deep breath. "I - I don't know..."

Clint cupped the back of her head with one hand, fingering the bandaged cut above her eyebrow with the other. "Darlin', come home."

Wanda nodded. "Okay..., okay, let's go home... Papa." She added that last ephitet as an afterthought. Clint's eyes lit up.

"Yes, Princess, let's go home." Clint wrapped Wanda in a tight hug, and they returned to the compound hand in hand.

...

The door opened and closed with a squeak and a bang, and bags and quivers were dropped to the floor. Laura turned around, giving a gasp of disbelief. She set the teakettle down with a bang and ran across the threshhold to the two figures at the door. She was swept into a tight hug from her dear husband. It was good to see him alive, albeit a little banged up and worse for wear. He kissed her on the forehead, and then allowed Laura to greet the newest member of the family. She gave Wanda a big hug and tender kiss on the nose.

"Welcome home, sweetheart," she whispered in her ear.

Wanda smiled and returned to hug. It was good to have a family again.


	2. Wanda Tells the Kids

With a little inspiration from sofiarose, I've decided to update this.

...

**_Telling the Kids_**

"Can you draw me something?" Lila asked as Wanda drew a face into the new sketch pad Clint had surprised her with a few days ago.

"Maybe," Wanda replied, picking up her colored pencils and adding silver-blond hair and big blue eyes to her portrait with practiced, gentle strokes. One of Wanda's hidden talents was drawing, and it was something she enjoyed during her downtime.

"Lila, stop bothering Wanda and finish your homework," Laura scolded from the kitchen where she was chopping veggies for dinner.

"Sorry, Mommy," Lila replied, picking up her pencil.

"It's okay, Laura," Wanda replied softly, not looking up from her drawing. "I don't mind." Wanda called Clint "Papa", but it had taken her some time to accustom Mama with his wife, so they had just settled on Laura for now.

"But Lila has homework to be doing," Laura pointed out sternly, directing the response more towards her 6 year old daughter than to Wanda. Lila blushed and returned to printing neat letters on the worksheet in front of her. Wanda added Pietro's signature smirk to the picture and finished shading the outline. She wrote Pietro's favorite phrase, "You didn't see that coming?" neatly over the drawing, then signed her initials in the bottom right corner.

"Who is that?" Lila asked in a whisper, leaning over her older sister.

"It's my brother, Pietro," Wanda replied quietly, eyes downcast.

"Oh. Where is he?" Lila asked innocently, unaware of Pietro's current situation. "Mommy, why doesn't Pietro live with us too?"

Wanda drew a sharp intake of breath as Laura's expression turned from horrified at her younger daughter to sympathetic towards her older one. Lila and Cooper had not yet been told that Wanda had a brother who had passed away. "Wanda, you don't-"

"No, it is time they knew." She turned to Lila with a deep breath. "Lila, my brother died a few months ago in an accident." Wanda pushed her sketchpad aside. The memory was still fresh in her mind.

"Oh, I - I," Lila stuttered. "I'm sorry," she said finally. "I didn't know." Wanda gave a nod and scooted her chair back, collecting her sketch pad and pens into a neat pile before disappearing up the stairs to her bedroom. "Wanda?" Lila made to run after her.

"Lila, leave her be," Laura said firmly, motioning the girl back into her chair.

...

Wanda ran up to her room and collapsed on the bed, burying her face in the pillow and letting the tears come. She'd thought she would have been able to speak of her brother without tears by now, but she had thought wrong.

"Wanda?" a voice at her open door startled her from her thoughts and she looked up, rubbing tears from her eyes. There stood 8-year-old Cooper, clad in jean shorts and a blue and green tank top and clutching a stuffed dinosaur.

"Hey, Coop," Wanda said quietly. "Do you need something?"

Cooper shook his head, walked forward and held up the dinosaur.

"This is Frank. He always helps me when I'm sad. I don't know why you're crying, but I thought Frank might be able to help you," Copper said, placing the toy on her bed. Wanda rolled over and pushed herself into a sitting position and held out her arms.

Cooper clambered up on the bed and curled up next to Wanda's side.

"Thank you, Cooper." She squeezed him tight as Cooper set Frank in her lap. "I was crying because I had a brother."

"You did?"

Wanda nodded. "Yeah, I did. His name was Pietro, and I think he would've liked you."

"Really? Well, where is he?" Cooper asked, laying his head on his sister's shoulder.

"He passed away a few months ago in an accident," Wanda explained, fresh tears springing to her eyes.

"Oh, Wanda, I'm sorry," Cooper said, hugging her tight.

"Thanks, kid," Wanda replied.

"Wanda?" Another voice made its presence known.

"Yes, Lila?"

"I'm sorry for earlier, I didn't know-"

"It's okay, honey. Come here." Wanda held out her other arm and Lila walked round to the other side of the bed and climbed up, nestling into Wanda's other side.

...

"Hey, honey," Clint said as he entered the house from outside. "Fence is all fixed." A fence along the north line had been damaged in a recent storm, so Clint had gone to repair it.

"Thank you," Laura replied as she tidied Lila's scattered papers and homework on the table. Clint came up and gave her a backwards hug, kissing her temple, then held up his bleeding fingers with a grimace. "Got any bandaids?" He'd cut his fingers on the barbed wire.

"Oh, honey, why didn't you wear gloves?" Laura asked as she grabbed a first aid kit from the cupboard and passed it to him. Clint shrugged and gave a grin.

"Where are the kids?" he asked, noticing the uncharacteristically quiet household as he dug through the kit.

"Upstairs," Laura replied. Clint glanced down at the table, where Wanda's open sketch pad sat, the drawing of Pietro on display.

"Oh no," he muttered grimly.

"Don't worry, Lila knows. Wanda told her," Laura said. "She ran up to her room after though, and I haven't seen her since."

"I'll go check on her," Clint said with one last kiss to her ear before collecting Wanda's sketch pad and pencils and heading upstairs. What he saw when he peeked into Wanda's bedroom shocked him. 3 kids with tear-streaked faces curled up on the bed, eyes closed. Clint snapped a picture with his phone, gently put away Wanda's art supplies, then covered the threesome with a blanket before backing out of the room, closing the door behind him.


End file.
